In Genesis Chapter 12 we read that Abraham was given some amazing promises by God. As soon as Abraham got to the promised land in order to receive those promises, he ran into problems. In this sermon we discuss those problems, their purposes and how that relates to our own Christian walk. We don't pray for problems, we pray for blessings. However, God doesn't give us the promises without us learning the lessons of the problems.

In this sermon, we study God's promises to Abraham and see just how they are also God's promises to the spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham (Galatians 3). These promises take faith, faith in Christ and faith that God will fulfill them. As Christians, we can embrace these promises as our own, that God will extend, expand and build on the promises of Abraham to include the world, and all the Gentile nations.

Since the Christian has been grafted into the people of God (Galatians 3), we can receive the promises to Abraham as our promises to us as well. This also means that what Abraham went through, we can fully expect to go through like-trials and testings as well.
This first sermon on the story of Abraham examines the call of God on His life. He did not choose God, God chose him. Likewise, when God has a call on the Christian's life it is the same scenario. God calls, we respond. Knowing that God has a call on our lives and it is not our "choice", then we also know that the trials and testings of the faith we go through are to strengthen that faith and it will see us through.

Since the Fall of man in the Garden, man has always had a dream of being like God, determining for himself good and evil. In man's rebellion, the descendants of Nimrod attempted just that in the building of the Tower of Babel. They rebelled against the mandate to fill the earth and instead built a centralized city that they may have all power and authority for themselves.
Man is still attempts to centralize authority, resulting in the tyranny by the few and the slavery of the many. But just like the story of Babel, God's will shall be accomplished, God will come down and scatter man from his unified dream. God's government for man is a decentralized government, it is localism.

God instituted slavery as a consequence for those who had contempt for authority. Ham exposed the nakedness of his father, Noah, to his brothers. His mocking and scorning revealed the contempt he had for biblical authority. Noah cursed Ham's youngest son, Canaan, because Ham was Noah's youngest son. This was perfect justice. It was the descendants of Canaan that would serve the descendants of Noah's other two sons, Shem and Japhath. This reveals the importance of honoring those in authority.

Once Noah and his family came out of the Ark they had the daunting task of building a new civilization. The first thing Noah did when he came off the ark was to build an altar and sacrifice one of each of the clean animals. This pleased the Lord and turned away His wrath, so immediately God promised never again to destroy every living thing on earth.
But God also instituted three things to help man take dominion over the earth. First was family, then dominion over nature, and lastly civil government. Noah and his family had everything they needed to be fruitful, multiply and subdue the earth for the glory of God.

The story of Noah's ark is much like the story of our salvation in Christ. Once saved from destruction, it is our task to learn what God's way is to rebuild everything according to His word. Noah had to start from scratch, we too, need to come out of the ark and re-build a godly culture.

In Genesis Chapter 7 we read of Noah and his family getting into the ark. There are several aspects of Noah's faith that we read in this chapter. He heard the word of God and he acted on it, all by faith. Noah applied his faith and God was pleased with him. In this sermon we examine this as well as the faith we are to have in building our arks today. An ark has to have all the elements of civilization within it, and each family is to sow into the next generation. What do we sow into the next generation?

In Genesis 6 we read that Noah had detailed instructions as to how he was to build the ark. In verse 22 we read that Noah did all that God commanded him. Noah couldn't get creative with the ark, there were very specific things that had to be done in order that the ark would do what it was supposed to do. Noah was obedient to the word of God as judgment was coming near. We are to be building an ark, something that holds all the foundations of civilization, so that when judgment comes, we will be able to rebuild. If judgment doesn't come in our lifetime, then we would build for the next generations.

Before the flood, we read about the results of mixing of the godly seed of Seth and the ungodly seed of Cain. The hybrid seed grew, matured and resulted in the totally depraved mind of man with his thoughts continually on sin. While the righteous ponder how they can obey God's word, the unrighteous ponder how they can rebel to a greater extent against God.